MARK LANEGAN BAND

Here comes that weird chill

10”/CD, Beggars Banquet

“Message to mine” is a grooving, drug-filled rocker that always makes me stand in front of the boxes of my stereo, bending my head back over and letting the waves of rock-guitars and wailing gravel-voices wash over me. That hasn’t happened to me since the very first heydays of grunge (don’t even dare say stoner rock), and this song is also new and energetic as hell and worth the price of this small record by itself. Using Queens of the Stone Age as a band (plus other people) Lanegan offers a couple of more songs, who build up to “Message to mine” or lead away from it. For those dark nights when the demon in your gut seems to be unable to sleep. It’s been a long way since “buzz factory” and we’ve all grown up, found and lost love, fought our demons, and have come away with scars and wounds and memories. But only some are gifted enough to build them into prayers. The subtitle of this record: "Methamphetamine Blues, Extras & Oddities" understates its worth. There is damn more to it.

A new band, a new taste. Or rather a collection of new bands and new tastes that leave a weird taste, but in a good way. Apparently, this Mini-LP (does that term still exists – with eight songs this is too big for an EP but as a ten-inch it is also too small for a full album, even though this record offers more than most albums do, but we’ll get to that soon) was planned as a one-off before the actual album comes out. And if it is anything to go by then this will be a great, almost revelatory album. Because Mark Lanegan has invited a lot of folks to help him get on a stony mountain-top from where different views in new directions are possible. There are Joshua Homme (Queens of the Stone Age), Greg Dulli (twilight singers*), Nick Oliveri (Queens of the Stone Age), Chris Goss (Masters of Reality), Dean Ween (Ween) and about a dozen other people helping out. Maybe this is just another Dessert-Session-record, only it was recorded in a hut in the mountains (or something) and was therefore released under a different name. Anyway, Mark Lanegan has left the desperate and black realms of his recent blues-efforts, which everybody, including me, loved and listened to during long lost nights, drenched in Whiskey and candlelights, and which are recommended to anyone who has fallen for the voice with the highest amount of gravel and soul modern music has to offer.

“here comes that weird chill” is no less drenched in Whiskey and candles are still appropriate, but, you know, at times Whiskey has a different effect than just numbing out the pain and cold and making you introspective. Usually, Whiskey starts to blend out the edges of your vision, narrowing your eyefield, and makes the rest of it blurry. Other times, Whiskey starts to burn in your gut, gives you strength and energy, which makes you want to rip trees from its ground, start a street-fight, burn something down and party ‘till you drop from the roof. A fanatic, energetic and demonic force rumbling in your intestines, making you do things you would never dream of while not under the influence. More drugs come in, different kinds. A godlike, unconscious effect that has started a many urban tale of destruction and irrationality, marvelled at by a lot of people and shunned by just as many.

And so it starts: “Metamphetamine Blues” is a bony, crunching stomper. You wait for Tom Waits era Bone Machine or even Killing Joke in a new life, but it ain’t, it is Mark Lanegan with his most distorted voice up to now, singing about heaven, but it sounds as if he is mistaking it with hell. Then there is moody, almost gothic little “instrumental” starting with an old gospel song (“He’s got the whole world in his hands..”) in the background and then a distorted guitar setting in to a spoken voice. Next, try to take in the Captain Beefheart-cover of “clear spot” (which is definitely better and more lively than the Magic Band sans Captain Beefheart-reunion from last year), in which Lanegan manages to capture the chaotic and destructive darkness of Beefheart. It rumbles and roams and wails like it should. Done that and you reach the mountain top, the highlight of the record: “Message to mine”, a song so great I want to put it any compilation tape or CD I am making right now. It looks so simple, but it ain’t. There is magic in it, black devilish magic maybe, but a forceful and driving beat and guitar-line that will carry you away swaying, but holding steady to not spill any of the spirit in your glass. I don’t know how anyone can listen to that song and not start to think about bottles of Whiskey or electric guitars.

From then on it is a long, slow walk along the heights of a mountain-top. Four more, great electrified blues-songs in that impeccable, unique style of Lanegan await you, including a “version” of one. But that is like a long, lasting phase of quietness and relaxing after sex. Only better. The melancholic, uncompromising dark and desperate suicide-letter of a song “lexington slow down” or the, in this context, almost uplifting “whish you well” could be highlights on any record. The overall atmosphere is dark and depressing, with a hint of nineteenth-century primitivity. Somewhere between “Gangs of New York” and the story told in “Whiskey in the jar”. Deep within the seedy parts and streets of the downtown districts of modern urban jungles, not a lot has changed in the last two hundred years. Even the computers (pro-tools) and studio-production has been used in a primordial, earthbound way to add to the general feeling of desperation. I know, computer-recording is globally accepted now and everybody uses it, but on “here comes..” you don’t hear it really. The feeling of an analogue, age-old or rather timeless recording, and that is what makes it so good. The theme seems to be that it is all lost, everything, love is gone and life is a drag or in the words used in “Metamphetamine Blues”: “rolling just to keep on rolling”. It is the ghost in the machine, the demon in the bottle, the monkey on the loose but all you feel is the hairs in your neck standing up and cold fingers walking up and down your spine. So you grab that bottle because it is “so good, so good baby, because it makes me forget” (Message to mine).

P.S.: If you like this, be sure to check out these two records: Derek DePrator - "when the train left the station" and William Elliot Whitmore - "Hymns for the hopeless".

*) Dulli and Lanegan are truly brothers in spirit. Both have fronted great grunge-bands (Screaming Trees and Afghan Whigs resp.), have extraordinary voices and went on to completely different musical shores after their bands fell apart.

www.beggars.com

01/2004